ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: What happens if you drop dry ice into slime?
Archive for 2016
August 19, 2016
THE NORMAL STANDARD IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN MEDIA: Deep and embedded left-wing bias, dense and fossilized
WATER? I NEVER TOUCH THE STUFF. Baker Brothers Switch From Bottling Water To Bottling Bourbon.
Vodka and gin, too.
FASTER, PLEASE: Mainstream science embraces ending ageing with major Mayo Clinic-backed research strategy.
The mission to end ageing got a significant boost today with the publication of an extensive strategy to take ageing-targeted drugs to clinical trials.
The strategy, which is laid out over six manuscripts, was published by the Geroscience Network, an organisation funded by the US’ National Institutes of Health whose members include the Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University and Harvard University.
The publication is highly significant, because it demonstrates that the notion of ageing as a treatable disease has moved from a fringe theory held only by a small percentage of researchers to a widely accepted notion being used as the basis for widespread research strategies.
“Recent research suggests that aging may actually be a modifiable risk factor,” explains Dr James Kirkland, director of the Mayo Clinic Robert and Arlene Kogod Center on Aging and study lead author on two of the manuscripts.
“The goal of our network’s collaborative efforts is to accelerate the pace of discovery in developing interventions to delay, prevent or treat these conditions as a group, instead of one at a time.”
Aubrey de Grey, Ray Kurzweil, et al., have been arguing for this over the past few decades. Good to see aging being treated as the disease that it is.
Will the media hold @POTUS Barack Obama to his own standard? This is tragic, daft leadership. #LouisianaFlood pic.twitter.com/oEljwu0S1e
— Ali Akbar (@ali) August 19, 2016
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: UC-Berkeley Chancellor Resigns Following Widespread Faculty Criticism; Latest Revelation: Amidst Widespread Budget Cuts University Paid $200,000 To Improve His Image. As I say in my book, there’s always money for the administration’s pet priorities, no matter how tight budgets get.
BURNING UP THE QUARTER MILE: Tesla Model S battery bursts into flames, car “totally destroyed” in 5 minutes.
WELL, GOOD: Scientists just developed a safer alternative to morphine without the dangerous side effects. “The drug, called PZM21, was custom-engineered to dock with the brain’s morphine receptor and alleviate pain, but without inducing morphine’s sometimes deadly side effects, such as suppressing breathing. . . . When tested on lab mice, the drug appeared to offer similar levels of pain relief to morphine, while showing reduced breathing impairment and constipation effects. The researchers also suggest that the drug might not be so addictive, because it doesn’t activate the brain’s dopamine systems.”
Well, stay tuned. And remember that heroin was originally introduced as a less-addictive alternative to morphine. . .
AT AMAZON, savings in Vitamins & Dietary Supplements.
Plus, savings on Digital SLRs.
SHARPER, PLEASE: New telescopes poised to unlock the universe.
For the Giant Magellan Telescope Organisation, a remote site in Chile, far from the ambient light of human habitation, will be home to the first of a new generation of extremely large telescopes. These optical telescopes will be far larger than anything we’ve seen to date.
With a diameter of 24.5 metres (80 feet) and a collecting area of 368 square metres (3,961 square feet), the GMT will open a new era of optical astronomy, able to capture images 10 times sharper than those of the Hubble Space Telescope. It’s the culmination of decades, if not centuries, of astronomical technology.
GMT is just one of three amazing new telescopes — optical, radio, and orbital — about to see “first light.”
Read the whole thing.
HOW TO SUCCEED IN THE ASTEROID BUSINESS without really mining.
WALMART DIET: Man drops 300 pounds by walking mile to buy food.
An Arizona man dropped more than 300 pounds — by walking a mile to Walmart to buy his food every time he got hungry.
“You walk to Walmart three times a day and you end up walking six miles,” said 31-year-old Pasquale “Pat” Brocco, who three years ago, weighed a gargantuan 605 pounds. “It’s amazing because I never walked six miles in my life and I was doing it every day.”
He also threw out “junk food and dairy in favor of vegetables, brown rice, quinoa, steel cut oatmeal and lean meats.”
MEANWHILE, HILLARY’S RESTING UNTIL SUNDAY: “Trump and Pence were also seen helping unpack a truck with supplies.”
It’s like all of a sudden he’s running a real campaign.
UPDATE: In A Rare Moment, Mary Landrieu Thanks Trump For Louisiana Visit, Throws Shade At Hillary & Obama.
After Donald Trump visited Louisiana to help unload supplies for victims ravaged by the massive, unprecedented flooding, former Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) thanked the GOP nominee and actually called out Hillary Clinton and President Obama for refusing to visit.
Here’s what Landrieu said:
Mary Landrieu: ‘I want to thank Mr. Trump for coming to LA…I hope Sec Clinton will make her way down. I hope Pres Obama will make a visit.’
— Byron York (@ByronYork) August 19, 2016
Meanwhile, Obama is has remained on vacation at Martha’s Vineyard, while Clinton has yet to even make an official statement on the flooding.
Ouch.
STOP THE PRESSES: For Freshmen, Campus Life Poses New Risks.
MEH. WE SHOULD GO BACK TO 28-YEAR TERMS, RENEWABLE ONCE FOR 14 MORE. Recording Industry Whines That It’s Too Costly To Keep Copyright Terms At Life Plus 50, Instead Of Life Plus 70.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Princeton University Banning the Word ‘Man.’
Man up, delicate Ivy League snowflakes — and take note, parents writing annual checks of over $60k or more for their kids’ cultural reprogramming. Or as Thomas Sowell wrote 20 years ago in The Vision of the Anointed, on the left’s sustained attack on “The Generic ‘He:’”
Trivial as such crusades may seem, they have been very successful in changing the way people talk in the media, in academia, and in government. Not only is the generic “he” taboo in many quarters, the speech controllers have pressed on to new conquests, attacking such words as “layman,” “craftsman,” “actress,” or “matron,” which violate their unisex view of the world, and also proscribe such phrases as “to master a language” because it uses a sex-specific word. These examples are from an official guidebook put out by the Australian government, which shows how far such crusades have spread. An American guidebook, distributed internationally, declares that there is “a perfectly scientific, completely foolproof, and highly theoretical model for avoiding sexism on the job.” As so often happens, pretensions of “science” are the last refuge of those who offer neither the evidence nor the logic that are integral to science.
The net effect of all this is that young women, especially in educational institutions where they are bombarded with radical feminist propaganda, are led to believe that every use of the generic “he” in books of the past is proof of disdain or hostility toward women, when in fact such usage simply avoided cluttering up the language or forcing writers into strained constructions and awkward phrases. In short, the anointed are helped to make yet another group feel like victims and to regard the anointed as their rescuers.
And exponentially more so these days than when Sowell wrote the above passage, on the “modern” college campus, for both students and their leftwing academic enablers, the will to power derives from victimhood.
21ST CENTURY HEADLINES: Helsinki Tries Self-Driving Buses in Real Traffic.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Bill Plagiarizes Hill’s Cookie Recipe In ‘First Lady’ Cookie Contest.
GIVE THE GIFT OF Amazon Prime.
INTERNET VOTING IS STUPID, REASON #LXXVII: Maintaining the secrecy of ballots returned via the Internet is “technologically impossible,” according to a new report.
Bring back paper ballots.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: This Week in Clinton Corruption for August 19, 2016.
You’re gonna need a bigger week.
THIS ISN’T THE 21st CENTURY I WAS PROMISED: Father Accused of Raping Daughter Acquitted After ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ Defense.
THAT’S NOT FUNNY: Comedian Fined $42,000 by Human Rights Tribunal for Telling a Joke.
These are Heinlein’s Crazy Years — we just live in them.
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): I’m worried my ex-dominatrix sister may have molested my son.